We are the world...

We started out the week with another fantastic Star of the Week presentation.  The children will continue to have these presentations through the end of the semester and if we don't get to your child by the last week of this semester we will pick up where we left off in January when we come back from winter break.

This week we went all around the world and learned about all the various countries and holidays that are celebrated. We started out the week learning about Dia de los Muertos in Mexico and how it is celebrated and what cymbals are equated with this holiday.

We were able to hit the piñata and enjoy the sweet treats and stickers and items inside.  The children each took turns hitting the piñata three times and then the teachers took turns to break it and share all the goodies!  

For some of our pre-reading activities the children cut out letters on one page to match them onto another page and spell out some of the vocabulary words we discussed at circle time. 

Besides some of these vocabulary words, we learned about skeletons and how beautifully they are decorated for these holidays.  The children looked at lots of various images of the colors and decorations used and then were able to color and decorate their own skeleton heads in the room.

After heading to Mexico we learned about passports and had designed our own to take the rest of our trips for the day.  The children drew pictures of themselves and then we traveled around the room by pretending to sail across water and fly across the sky and drive on the highway to travel all over the world.  

In our travels this week we talked a lot about the variety of places people live and how different we all look from one another and yet we all live on this planet together and are all a piece of the puzzle.  

We gave each child a blank puzzle and the children took time to color all over the puzzle and then cut it into various pieces so they could bring their puzzled home and ask someone at home to try to put it back together.  Watch out parents, the children were very creative with their puzzles and they wanted to make them tricky to put back together! 

We worked on a bulletin board in our hallway as a class this week and after the children made hand prints on the giant globe they took a variety of paper people and added clothes and faces to them to also put on the bulletin board.  The teachers are going to be adding their hand prints to the background of the board which will appear on Instagram next week.

For some of our geography lessons this week we gave the children two maps of the world.  We counted the continents and then cut them out to have glue them onto the other map in the correct place to match up and learn which continents are near each other.

After enjoying our map lesson we learned about the various types of water there are in the world and that oceans are made up of salt water which is not something we can drink like the water in our sinks.  We did some science lessons that involved adding salt into jars of water to see what happens with toy objects we placed in the various jars to talk about buoyancy with salt water verses fresh water.

After manipulating the salt levels in water we looked at a variety of buildings from around the world like the Eiffel Tower and Pyramids and then built triangles for the pyramid shape and an outline for the Eiffel Town with masking tape and then painted all over the paper then removed the tape to 'magically' create the shape of the building they wanted.  These have been drying at school and will go home next week to enjoy.

 After we painted to make buildings we then worked on painting a glue solution onto balloons with tissue paper to make piñatas to remind them of the one we broke at school.  The children are welcome to use their piñatas at home or  use them as holiday decorations as well.

 After the visit to Mexico again, we went to Italy to learn about many things related to that country.  The children worked on some math with their pizza projects as they counted and wrote down the shapes they put on their pizza to represent various toppings.

Once we made our pizzas we then worked on building structures from around the world like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Egyptian Pyramids and the Great Wall of China.  We then built them with cups in teams to see who could build the largest structure, who could build the most structures, etc.

 We saw so many wonderful things from so many places in the world this week that after all of our travels we decided to take 'pictures' of everything we saw.  The children were given paper cameras and small circles of paper for the 'flash' where they drew images of the things they chose as their favorites from the week.

Before heading home on Friday we took one final trip to Africa.  While we were there we made necklaces which were called 'abuja' and added a variety of items to them to make them stand out.

What's Coming Up?

The request for spring semester tuition has gone out and will need to be paid by December 1st in order to be ready for the spring semester.  If any current parents have issues with this due date, please let me know.  

We do not have school next week, the week of Thanksgiving.  We will see everyone for Weather and Seasons week the week of November 27th.  

The Magic of Pirate Pete Preschool

This week we talked about all things related to Disney and magic.  We learned which movies the children have seen and what they know about them and then started our first project highlighting the mouse who started it all; Mickey!

 After making Mickey Mouse heads we used the magic of toilet paper to turn each other into Olaf from the movie Frozen.  Lots of giggles were had by teachers and preschoolers alike as we wrapped each other in as much toilet paper we could find before choosing to have a snowball fight instead and threw toilet paper snowballs all over the room!

 After we cleaned up the room we broke out into stations to add and subtract people into cars who would be heading to see Lightening McQueen race and then we moved to build towers and knock them down like Wreck it Ralf and then find all the bears in piles of animals to help Merida 'Brave'ly track down her mom.

We jumped into some chalk drawings with Mary Poppins this week before making magic mirrors to use to call Snow White to help her with a variety of tasks for the day.  

 Once we finished our mirrors and called out to see Snow White appear and give our first mission to help Snow White pick out the best way to keep an apple from turning brown to make magical pies.  We took apple slices and placed one in a bowl of sprite, one in a bowl of water and left one in a bowl with no liquid.  Then, after we worked on other activities we decided to check on them to see which apple would be best to use in Snow White's pies. 

Our next mission from Snow White was to help collect all of her animal friends who wandered out of the magical forest.  We learned the animals could loose their magic if we touched them so we had to use tongs and clips to pick them up.  We were able to pile them all back into the bin to send them away back to Snow White's kingdom.  

Snow White was so grateful to our preschoolers for all of their help in working on collecting her animals and gathering the right instruments together for her apple pies.  

A lot of our preschoolers love the movie Trolls so we did some activities with that this week too.  The children made us laugh as they added lots of google eyes to create 'scary trolls' during this project.    

Later in the week we worked on patterns with various fantasy characters like Cinderella and Prince Charming, etc.  The children needed to 'read' the patterns on their pages to their teachers and then cut out the image that was supposed to go next in the pattern and glue it into place.  

Some of the children are still working on cutting so the teachers would help them out by holding the paper for them so they could just focus on squeezing the scissors.  

On our fine motor skill checklist each teacher has been observing whether or not the child needs this assistance or if they use both hands to hold the paper and cut at the same time on their own.  Based on these case study observations we will be working more or less on these skills individually as well as within the large group activities.

Next up in the creative arena we made paper plate Monsters in support of Monsters Inc. and then worked on some challenges like the monsters in Monsters University do on campus. 

The children did a relay race with balloons in the room where they had to place a balloon between their legs and travel across the room, around cones then run the balloon back to the next person in line.  

After that we worked on spelling this week and letter sounds by listening to the first sound of various Disney characters and then drew that letter on the tables with shaving cream.  If you are ever in the need to clean your table at home, just put a little shaving cream on it and let your child play.  It is one of the best cleaning methods we've seen to take up otherwise tougher 'play' stains on our tables!  They always come out super clean after this messy activity!  

Our little scientists worked on constructing our emotions like in the movie Inside Out by mixing various colors representing various emotions we all feel at times and then we added alka-seltzer tablets to the colored water and vegetable oil mix and then watched the emotions mix and move and grow and shrink just like inside our own bodies.

After making it rain and perform a little Disney magic during music time, we sang along and danced to a variety of Disney movie songs.  It was a lot of fun to see the children sing every word of some of their favorites and be able to identify them from just hearing the first few bars of the songs.

More science this week entailed using baking soda and blue vinegar to bubble up some frozen ice ponds like Elsa in the movie Frozen. 

Then we worked on home-made puzzles out of popsicle sticks.  The children had an outline of Mickey Mouse's head on a set of popsicle sticks and to help them figure out the puzzle more the teachers wrote the numbers 1-5 in ascending order.  As the children placed the sticks in order of which number comes first, they found the image of Mickey appear.  Once it was assembled the teachers taped the back of the sticks together and then the children were able to color in their puzzle in order to make it easier to play this puzzle  again at home or just use it as a great work of art. 

We practiced putting numbers in order with some small motor activities as we thread string through holes in a Mickey Mouse head.  Some of the children chose to add designs with their strings instead of following the numbers while others worked very hard on staying in the order of 1-10.

This week we heard a lot of stories from a variety of books based on Disney movies.  The children were always attentive and interested in the books as they were usually familiar tales.

We did a few stations on Friday before getting ready to head home and worked in Tiana's (The Princess Frog's) kitchen running a restaurant like she always planned while others played 'on the beach' in our sand table with Ariel, The Little Mermaid.  

We also made up our own fantasy tales as we played dress up with all kinds of costumes from all sorts of careers, cultures and fairy tales.

We laughed and laughed at the reactions of our final science activity of the week as the children used their eyes and noses to guess various types of pet food that would be good for the characters of the movie Pets. According to our preschoolers, dog treats smell 'disgusting!'

What's Coming Up?

• This coming week we will be talking about cultures around the world; one of our favorite units!
• The following week of November 19th we will not have preschool due to the Thanksgiving holiday so we will see you all back at school the week of November 26th.